Ryan Griffis currently teaches new media art at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He often works under the name Temporary Travel Office and collaborates with many other writers, artists, activists and interesting people in the Midwest Radical Culture Corridor.The Temporary Travel Office produces a variety of services relating to tourism and technology aimed at exploring the non-rational connections existing between public and private spaces. The Travel Office has operated in a variety of locations, including Missouri, Chicago, Southern California and Norway.

Networked Performance pointed me toward an interview (download in PDF)with Networked Publics speaker Henry Jenkins and Networked Publics friend danah boyd about Myspace. The site, popular with teenagers, has become increasingly controversial as parents and the press raise concerns about the openness of information on the site and the vulnerability this supposedly poses to predators (Henry points out that only .1% of abductions are by strangers) and the behavior of teens towards each other (certainly nothing new, only now in persistent form). In another essay on Identity Production in Networked Culture, danah suggests that Myspace is popular not only because the technology makes new forms of interaction possible, but because older hang-outs such as the mall and the convenience store are prohibiting teens from congregating and roller rinks and burger joints are disappearing.

This begs the question, is Myspace media or is it space? Architecture theorists have long had this thorn in their side. "This will kill that," wrote Victor Hugo with respect to the book and the building. In the early 1990s, concern about a dwindling public culture and the character of late twentieth century urban space led us to investigate JÃ¼rgen Habermas's idea of the public sphere. But the public sphere, for Habermas is a forum, something that, for the most part, emerges in media and in the institutions of the state:

The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor. The medium of this political confrontation was peculiar and without historical precedent: people's ...

SWITCH Journal is proud to announce the launch of Issue 22: A Special
Preview Edition to ISEA 2006/ ZeroOne San Jose.

As San Jose State University and the CADRE Laboratory are serving as
the academic host for the ZeroOne San Jose /ISEA 2006 Symposium,
SWITCH has dedicated itself to serving as an official media
correspondent of the Festival and Symposium. SWITCH has focused the
past three issues of publication prior to ZeroOne San Jose/ISEA2006
on publishing content reflecting on the themes of the symposium. Our
editorial staff has interviewed and reported on artists, theorists,
and practitioners interested in the intersections of Art & Technology
as related to the themes of ZeroOne San Jose/ ISEA 2006. While some
of those featured in SWITCH are part of the festival and symposium,
others provide a complimentary perspective.

Issue 22 focuses on the intersections of CADRE and ZeroOne San Jose/
ISEA 2006. Over the past year, students at the CADRE Laboratory for
New Media have been working intensely with artists on two different
residency projects for the festival – “Social Networking” with Antoni
Muntadas and the City as Interface Residency, “Karaoke Ice” with
Nancy Nowacek, Marina Zurkow & Katie Salen. Carlos Castellanos,
James Morgan, Aaron Siegel, all give us a sneak preview of their
projects which will be featured at the ISEA 2006 exhibition. Alumni
Sheila Malone introduces ex_XX:: post position, an exhibition
celebrating the 20th anniversary of the CADRE Institute that will run
as a parallel exhibition to ZeroOne San Jose/ ISEA 2006. LeE
Montgomery provides a preview of NPR (Neighborhood Public Radio)
presence at ...

The North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) has released a special issue of their journal, Cartographic Perspectives:
Art and Mapping
Issue 53, Winter 2006
Edited by Denis Wood and and John Krygier
Price: $25
The issue includes articles by kanarinka, Denis Wood, Dalia Varanka and John Krygier, and an extensive catalogue of map artists compiled by Denis Wood.

The topic of June at the - empyre - mailing list will be Liquid Narratives. The concept of 'liquid narrative' is interesting in that it allows to think about the unfoldings of contemporary languages beyond tech achievements, by relating user controlled applications with formats such as the essay (as described by Adorno in "Der Essay als Form", The essay as a form) and procedures related to the figure of the narrator (as described by Benjamin in his writings about Nikolai Leskov).
Both authors are accute critics of modern culture, but a lot of his
ideas can be expanded towards contemporary culture. As a matter of
fact, one of the main concerns in Benjamin's essay is a description of
how the rise of modernism happens on account of an increasing nprivilege of information over knowledge, which is even more intense nowadays. To understand this proposal, it is important to remember how Benjamin distinguishes between an oral oriented knowledge, that results from 'an experience that goes from person to person' and is sometimes anonymous, from the information and authoritative oriented print culture.
One of the aspects of this discussion is how contemporary networked culture rescues this 'person to person' dimension, given the distributed and non-authoritative procedures that technologies such as the GPS, mobile phones and others stimulate.

In response to the upcoming centennial of the U.S. National Park Service (2016) and the 50th anniversary of the National Trails System (2018), Prefigurative Park Services is seeking proposals for new parks and trails, broadly defined, which contribute to its core mission of preserving political possibility and connecting otherwise. PPS is interested in projects that both interrogate the historical meanings of parks and trails and re-imagine their spatial forms, social processes, and emancipatory functions in the twenty-first century, particularly in relation to unfolding ecological and economic crises.

The final form(s) of the larger PPS project as well as the individual contributions remains undetermined and very open. We anticipate a heterogeneous mix of conceptual design proposals, essays, interviews, drawings, maps, tours, audio/video/photo essays, etc. Feel free to contact PPS if you would like to discuss potential forms prior to the deadline. Our goal is to compile these proposals and responses into forms that can be distributed and exhibited for multiple audiences: a comprehensive website; a series of posters that can be printed and exhibited; a guide book containing the proposals along with critical/creative writing on parks and trails.

Proposals should not exceed 1000 words. Maps and images (drawings, photographs, pictures of models) are encouraged. Please submit your proposals to prefigurativeparkservices@gmail.com. The deadline for proposals is May 1, 2015, although we recommend you be in touch as soon as possible if you plan to submit a proposal. The tentative deadline for final projects is January 15, 2016.

CUP's office is now located in a potential SUPERFUND SITE. Superfund is a federal program that investigates and cleans up the most complex uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous waste sites in the country. There are over 1,331 final and proposed sites on the National Priorities List (NPL), and thousands more wait for approval. Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed adding the Gowanus Canal to this list.

Please join the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), and Urban Omnibus for a different kind of Superfund discussion. Artist Brooke Singer, advocate Anne Rabe, and historian Sarah Vogel will discuss the history of the Superfund program, the politics of designation, and the changing legal definitions of toxins, risk, and responsibility. Local experts will also give updates on the status of the Gowanus’ designation.

Anne Rabe is the BE SAFE campaign coordinator for the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice. Anne has 25 years of organizing experience on environmental and social justice issues. From 1990 to 2003, she was director and co-founder of Citizens' Environmental Coalition, a statewide grassroots organization in New York State helping communities harmed by toxic pollution and organizing campaigns on State Superfund, radioactive waste disposal, Kodak's dioxin pollution, and other issues. She has received eight state and national awards for her work.

Brooke Singer is a media artist who lives in New York City. Her work blurs the borders between science, technology, politics, and arts practices. She works across media to provide entry into important social issues that are often characterized as specialized or opaque to the general public. She is currently Assistant Professor of New Media at Purchase College, State University of New York, and co-founder of the art, technology, and activist group Preemptive Media. She recently created Superfund365, an online data visualization and communication tool that highlights 365 of the worst toxic sites across the U.S.:http://www.superfund365.org/

Sarah Vogel is currently the Program Officer for the Environmental Health program at the Johnson Family Foundation. She received her PhD from Columbia University’s Department of Sociomedical Sciences. Her dissertation, The Politics of Plastics: The Molecular Biography of Bisphenol A, tells the history of the science and politics of this chemical, used in plastics production since the 1950s, known to have estrogen-like properties, and now found in the vast majority of American bodies. Her research and writing considers the question of how we all became a little plastic and the changing meaning of chemical risks and safety over time.

GOO GONERisk, Responsibility, and Toxins in the LandscapeTuesday, July 7, 2009, 7-9 pmThe Old American Can Factory (In the courtyard, weather permitting)232 Third St at Third AveGowanus, BrooklynFree and open to the public, RSVP to info@anothercupdevelopment.orgRefreshments provided!

The People and Buildings series is made possible with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and by the New York Council on the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

We have released on Public Record the fourth and final collection of one-minute audio responses to the question: What is the sound of the war on the poor? This instalment in the series features recordings from the below contributors and can be linked to directly at; http://publicrec.org/archive/2-06/2-06-005/2-06-005.html

All sixty contributions are be available for free download at www.publicrec.org and are licensed under Creative Commons.

For those of you who receive the music magazine THE WIRE, you probably saw the half-page ad we placed in the June issue to publicize the series. I have attached a GIF version of the advertisement for your archive.

Thanks to everyone for contributing to the series! I welcome feedback from everyone on the overall experience of hearing the pieces and organizing your own sound of the war on the poor.

Thousand Kites is excited to offer community radio stations and individuals the 9th annual national radio program Calls from Home. The program features phone calls from mothers and children, brothers and grandparents, sharing the intimate power of families speaking directly to their incarcerated loved ones. Calls from Home, produced in the coalfields of central Appalachia, reaches a national network of prisoners, their loved ones and public listeners through community radio in an effort to educate the public about the criminal justice system.

GET INVOLVED with our national radio broadcast for prisoners: CALLS FROM HOME. This year there are 5 ways you can participate!

1) Help spread the word in your community about when and how to call in2) Contact your local community radio station and ask them to broadcast CALLS FROM HOME3) Send your shout-out to your friend or family member inside4) Host a CALLS FROM HOME House Party and listen to the 10-minute Special Broadcast5) If you're local in Whitesburg, stop by and help us mail postcards!

Check out the CALLS FROM HOME event page to learn more details about these 5 steps!

--Have you wanted to host a film screening of Up the Ridge, or stage a reading of the Thousand Kites play but it just seemed too hard? Well now there's help! Check out our new Facilitation Guide on our website (www.thousandkites.org) to learn the easy steps you can take to launch Thousand Kites in your community!--

How does the criminal justice system affect your community? Maybe you have been incarcerated or have a loved one who has been incarcerated. Maybe you work inside a prison. Maybe you're just concerned about the growing prison population in the United States. What do you want the public to know about your experience? What story do you have to share?

Be part of the dialogue.Call toll-free 877-518-0606.Share your story today.

It has been a while since we last wrote you and we have some exciting things to report.

Temporary Services has started our own publishing house and online store: Half Letter Press. With that, we have just released our first self-published book. It is titled Public Phenomena and let us tell ya, it looks beautiful! 152 glossy full color pages. We can't wait for you to see it.

This book is the result of over ten years of photographic documentation and research on the variety of modifications and inventions people make in public. From roadside memorials to makeshift barriers, people consistently alter shared common spaces to suit their needs, or let both man-made and natural aberrations run wild. The result is a new kind of public space - with creative and inspiring moments that push past the original planned design of cities.

Half Letter Press takes its name from the half of a "Letter"-size sheet of paper printing format that we have used for nearly ten years and 80 publications. In addition to publishing books, which will include books by other authors in the future, Half Letter Press was created to better distribute our own work and the work of other creative people whose work we admire. We have created a online store toward this end:http://www.halfletterpress.com/store/

Half Letter Press offers volume discounts for multiple copies of Public Phenomena. We also offer a variety of alternative payment methods including trading. Please consider telling your book and booklet-loving friends about us! If you make something you feel we should sell, or if you would like to help us distribute our new book Public Phenomena, please get in touch.